Social media, when used correctly, can be a valuable resource to a business of any size and shape. Social media helps you reach a very targeted audience each and every time. The obvious platforms like Facebook and Twitter have a very large overall database of people and with the right tools and strategy can prove to be very effective.

Data mining is really nothing new. The thing that makes this hot topic exciting now-a-days are computers. Never before could we process such large data sets to look for those patterns and relationships. Also, never before has so much data been collected.

Are you taking full advantage of social media to drive your business goals? Discover how popular platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, and others can aid you in engaging your consumers?

Last week, while presenting to a class of MBA students at Illinois State University, the question of monitoring your brand in social media came up. A student was struggling with how to get his administration to understand the importance of online monitoring. I simply answered, "But those reasons don’t stop the conversations already going about your brand. "

I signed up for the Facebook Graph Search waiting list when a notification about it popped up on my homepage. I expected to wait for a month before anything would become of it. Only a week later, I received another notification that I had been removed from the waiting list. Facebook invited me to try out the new Graph Search.